Blizzard intends to find a new e-sports partner in South Korea, according to a recent interview with a top Blizzard executive. In an interview with Korean newspaper Yonhap News, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said that the company is moving in a new direction - which is apparently away from KeSPA, who currently handles StarCraft competitions in the region. KeSPA (aka the Korean e-Sports Association) has been at odds with Blizzard over what boils down to money. Blizzard says that the company doesn't respect its IP rights and has refused to talk to them for 3 years.

KeSPA is one of the largest e-sports associations in South Korea and supports some of the most popular professional StarCraft teams in the country. It also has the ear of the government, who recently gave StarCraft II, a mature rating of 18+. This seemed to be a direct response to Blizzard's attitude towards KeSPA and the removal of LAN support in StarCraft II, which ultimately gives Blizzard more control over online play via Battle.net - the only way you can play the game multiplayer.

Blizzard's top executive went on to say that the company is appealing the mature rating, because the game was intended for a teen audience. Chances are if it doesn't make amends with KeSPA or find a partner that is in the government's good graces, it won't get anywhere with that appeal.

But even if Blizzard does manage to find a new partner to handle e-sports in the country (likely), and gets StarCraft II reclassified with a Teen rating (less likely), one has to wonder what happens to StarCraft? The turn of a blind eye, perhaps? A lawsuit? We’ll keep you posted on that situation as it develops.

On a slightly related note, Morhaime predicted that StarCraft II will surpass StarCraft's worldwide sales record and noted that a "large portion" of any money made off of e-sports in Korea will be rolled back into it in the form of sponsorships, prize money and more.

Comments

good on them. I hate their methods but I approve their reasons. I want Blizzard to get hammered over and over again in their number 1 market until they reintroduce LAN support for this game. It's Supcom2 all over again.

Until game companies realize that not everyone in the world has unlimited broadband connection/quotas like the US do, I applaude any action to put them in their place in the removal of any local network support.

Until its cracked which they are begging it to be....I think blizzard is not seeing the forest for the trees screw individual or group licensing,write the country off(IP lock the region to free/non checked mode) and ask 5-10% of money made from the sports events.Fckign A man even an idoit can see if you cn get 1-2% of that it would bloodly well pay off

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm